Page 12 of The Unraveling

And then he leaves. He goes to our room. He doesn’t fight for me any further.

All I really want is for him to get angry with me. To yell, too. To hold me and not let go until I can cry. Cry for my mother. I hated her, yes, but she is—was—still my mother and I abandoned her. I wanted her to know how it felt to be abandoned. I just didn’t anticipate she wouldn’t recover.

I know what it would feel like to crawl in there beside him. Into our linen sheets beneath our fluffy comforter. The twinkle lights he let me wrap around the brass headboard would glow behind us. If I wanted to apologize, he would hear it. If I curled up against him and told him I loved him and I was sorry, he would hear it. I could promise to get help, to talk to someone. I could even tell him he was right.

But instead, I get out my phone and type out a text.

Can I stay over?

Chapter Four

David answers after only a few minutes.

Sorry hon, I’m already back in NY. Text Arabella she will help you, one hundred percent. Kisses.

He gives me her number.

I hesitate for a long time before deciding what to do. I hardly know this girl. She’s essentially a stranger to me.

And yet, in a weird way I feel I know her better than Jane or Artie, who I am now categorizing as Jordan’s friends.

She’s from my world; they are from Jordan’s.

I take a deep breath. Maybe it’s time I return to my world.

I grab a few pairs of pointe shoes, some ballet things, and a few other essentials and throw them in my old Longchamp backpack. I don’t want to bring too much and invite the old what are you doing, moving in? joke.

I decide not to take a car and instead walk to her place. It’s freezing and wet outside. I feel like a sponge soaking up icy water as I walk through the streets.

What have I done? Why am I ruining things with Jordan? Why can’t I control myself?

It’s almost a half-hour walk, and in that time I sober up considerably and feel even worse and weirder than I did before. Part of me wants to turn around already, go back to Jordan and apologize. But a bigger part of me is urging me onward. To Arabella. Back to ballet. Away from being just someone’s girlfriend. Away from being some man’s pretty little thing.

I text her when I arrive and she comes out of her own window and hangs over the railing. “You beautiful fucking thing, it’s frigid out there, come on up here where it’s warm, darling!”

There really are certain things you can only say and sound cool when you do so in a sexy accent. If I had said exactly that, with my own American accent—which is the kind of neutral you only get when you’re covering up a poor southern twang—I would have sounded like a complete idiot.

I climb the three flights of steps to get to her floor and find her holding the door open with her body at a forty-five-degree angle. Her toe is balancing the door to keep it open, and her attention is inside the flat, where she is screaming at someone in Spanish.

At first, I think I’ve made a mistake in coming. If she’s having a fight with her own boyfriend or something, I certainly don’t need to come in reeling from my own and add fuel to their fire. As I don’t know Arabella all that well, I don’t even know if she has a boyfriend, but if I had to guess, I’d guess she has several.

She turns to me, smiling big. “Welcome, cariño.”

“Thanks so much for helping me out,” I say. “My boyfriend and I had a fight, and—”

“You don’t even need to tell me,” she says. “My place is open for you anytime you want.” She uses her toes to lift up the mat in front of the door, where there is a key hidden. “This is always here. Always, all my friends know, it’s an open-door policy.”

“That’s so nice,” I say. Something in me doesn’t quite trust it, but I know I’m probably just being paranoid.

“So come in, vamos, come!”

“Thanks so much for answering so late, too,” I say, walking through the door and leaning to give her a hug when I see her arm open to me. In her other hand is a dirty martini.

“Don’t even worry!” She grabs me by the chin and plants a plump kiss on my lips. “We only got back from dinner an hour ago. Sorry I didn’t hang around the club the other night—I always seem to have drama to deal with.” She laughs.

Once in her apartment, I see that there are several girls in the living room lying around like cats. They’re all pretty and petite, their ages hard to tell, but they look like they’re all around twenty to twenty-three. They all look like ballerinas.

A sexy, warm, slinky song hums from the record player.

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